


One Step Closer to the Edge

by forgetthehorrorstory



Category: Twilight Series - Stephenie Meyer
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, M/M, Mystery, Slow Burn, Undercover Missions, bella's dead oops, canon-typical vampire suicide talk, some mention of past trauma, ten year time jump, two gay hotties go to college
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 17:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 9,330
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29157225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forgetthehorrorstory/pseuds/forgetthehorrorstory
Summary: Ten years after Bella's death on the mountain, college students begin disappearing from their Seattle dorm rooms. Shaken out of his grief by a life-altering secret, Edward seeks out the only other person he can rely on to help him solve the mystery: Jacob Black, a man with secrets of his own.Slooooow burn m/m romance, updated weekly.
Relationships: Jacob Black/Edward Cullen
Comments: 13
Kudos: 36





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome to 2021, the year of our lord and savior Jedward. He will cleanse our sins, and so on. This fic has already been about 50% written and will come in between 50-60k. Planning for Tuesday updates.  
> Recommended listening: linkin park, obviously

The line into the bar snaked down the block and around the corner, a queue of bare-chested devils and glitter-specked fairies shivering in the unseasonal chill. Jacob raised an eyebrow at Griffin.  
“We’re never getting in.”  
“As much as you wish that were the case, I have bad news for you: I know a guy.” Griffin tossed his dark blonde hair and flicked his cape so that it billowed behind him. He smiled at Jake, plastic fangs glinting wetly in the orange streetlight.  
Jacob had stopped just short of begging Griffin to change his Halloween costume. He knew his distaste would just encourage him.  
Jake followed Griffin to the front of the line, feeling each pair of eyes as they landed on him. He knew he cut a strange figure on the streets of Capitol Hill, over six and a half feet of muscle and brown skin contrasting with the largely pale and thin crowd waiting to get into the bar. He also knew most of the looks, appreciative as they were, wouldn’t translate to attention once they got inside. He was one of those things people liked to look at rather than touch, and for the most part that suited him just fine.  
Griffin glided up to the bouncer, who Jake suddenly recognized as the guy Griffin had brought home the weekend before. He was broad-chested and bald, and his answering smile was a confident, knowing smirk.  
“Hey, Griff,” he said, unhooking the rope over the door. “Nice outfit.”  
Griffin ducked his head in thanks, pulling the cape wide to show off his full outfit: leather straps criss-crossing his chest over his white collared shirt, his leather pants so tight they left nothing to the imagination.  
“I vant to suck your blood,” he said, exaggerating the typical Dracula accent. Jake fought the urge to shove him through the door.  
“My blood, huh? That wouldn’t be my first choice,” the bouncer said, before catching sight of Jacob over Griffin’s head. “What are you supposed to be? No, wait, let me guess—serial killer, right? They look like everybody else?”  
Jacob was wearing his usual black t-shirt and jeans, the fabric cut close to the skin. He shook his head.  
“Werewolf,” he replied, gesturing toward the sky. “It’s not a full moon.”  
The bouncer smirked and waved them in, not bothering with their IDs.  
At the end of a narrow hallway, a girl in a black catsuit taped neon bands to their wrists and let them through a curtain into the main room of the bar. Inside, the music blared, bass thumping hard and heavy in Jacob’s chest. The bar wasn’t huge, but it was so packed with people that if Jacob weren’t a regular patron, he would have no sense of the size or shape of the space.  
Griffin picked his way through the crush of bodies to the bar that ran the length of the right side of the room, flagging down a shirtless bartender with a wink and a smile. If Jacob had lived a different life, he might have been impressed with the way Griffin’s angular face and easy grin got him anything he wanted. As it was, it was very nearly Jacob’s least favorite thing about his friend.  
Jacob scanned the room out of habit, leaning back against a bit of free space along the back wall. The air smelled like sweat and arousal and the sharp, icy air from outside. Somewhere, scattered throughout various corners and bathroom stalls, he tasted the crystalline, chemical tang of cocaine. The waft of pot off of people’s skin and jackets carried on the air as they came in from outside.  
They were human smells, crowd smells. Jake felt something in him loosen. He’d promised Griffin he’d at least try to have fun tonight, and he would. Try, that is.  
When Griffin found him a few minutes later, drink in hand, he was accompanied by someone tall and fair-haired, a band of black makeup across his eyes like a mask. It took Jacob a moment to organize his scent and his features into something familiar.  
“Stephen,” he said, just a second too late. “Hey.”  
“Hi, Jake,” Stephen replied.  
Griffin shot Jacob a look. “I’m going to go see what time Greg gets off,” he said, flitting back towards the entrance before Jacob could think of a believable protest.  
Jacob had met Stephen at Griffin’s fourth of July party that past summer. Jake had shown up with Leah, and had every intention of making pleasantries for a few minutes and leaving, until Stephen had emerged from the pool, tall and lean and ginger haired and smiling at him, and Leah had rolled her eyes and told Jake she’d meet up with him later. Within the hour, Jake was up against the sink in the bathroom, Stephen on his knees in front of him. They’d barely spoken after. It was the sort of thing Jacob used to do a lot and tried to do less of, now. He’d tried to feel guilty about it, but found it hard to feel much of anything.  
“Listen, I’m—”  
Stephen waved him off. “Don’t,” he said. “Do you want to dance?”  
They moved further into the room, weaving through sweaty bodies until they were at the other end of the long, narrow room, close to the DJ. The music was deafening here, the floor sticky beneath their shoes.  
Stephen pressed close to him. Jacob smelled sweat and the clay scent of his makeup, syrupy liquor faint beneath it. Jacob rested his hands on Stephen’s hips, pulling him closer.  
In the grand scheme of bad ideas, being with Stephen was certainly not among the worst. Griffin would certainly be pleased; he’d told Jake over and over after the party that Stephen had asked about him, that he’d like to see Jacob again.  
“So what if he’s my ex-boyfriend?” Griffin had replied when Jake had halfheartedly tried that excuse. “I have lots of those. It means I know him, and I can vouch for him. He’s a good one.”  
Jacob couldn’t say then that that was the problem. He didn’t mesh well with good things. Even as he tugged Stephen against him, hips pressed hard to his own, ran his lips along the rasp of the other man’s jaw, he wondered how this moment would eventually be ruined.  
If it had been another time, many years before, Jacob would have smelled the answer to his question as it walked noiselessly through the door. But he had aged, and trained himself numb, so the many scents in the room mixed and faded as he lost himself in the throbbing beat and the man in his arms. He noticed nothing amiss as Stephen’s lips found his own.  
It was only once the song changed that Stephen broke the kiss, his breathing rough.  
“Want to get out of here?” he asked, lips brushing Jacob’s earlobe.  
Jacob did want that, but not with Stephen.  
“I promised Griff I’d stick around a while,” Jacob said. He watched Stephen glance toward the end of the bar, where the crowd was thinner and Griffin was in full view, eagerly holding court within a cluster of people who looked vaguely familiar to Jacob. Stephen saw the lie for what it was, Jacob knew, but he just smiled and rubbed his hand along Jacob’s arm before disappearing into the crowd. Jacob weaved his way back to the bar, stopping to buy a beer before joining the throng around Griffin.  
“And then I told her—Jake, where’d Stephen go?”  
“Dancing, I assume,” Jacob shrugged. Griffin squinted at him for a brief moment but thankfully let it drop.  
“He’s missing it, then,” a member of Griffin’s posse said, a boy wearing a flower crown who looked much too young to be in the bar.  
“Missing what?” Jacob asked, more out of a desire to follow the change of subject than true interest.  
“Oh my God, Jake,” Griffin said, reaching out to clutch Jacob’s forearm. “Did you see him? You probably didn't, because you were too far away.”  
“See who?” Jake asked, trying to keep his impatience with Griffin’s theatrics out of his voice. He discovered without any surprise that he was suddenly in a shitty mood.  
“This guy just walked in. I’ve never seen him before—I’d remember a face like that. He has to be the single hottest person I’ve ever fucking seen.”  
“You wound me,” Jake joked, trying to cover for his ill humor, but something prickled along his skin at the strange tone in Griffin’s voice. It was reverent, beyond mere admiration. The line of heat under his skin grew and spread like a wildfire.  
“Where is he?” Jake asked, voice suddenly rough though he’d tried to make the question nonchalant. Griffin shot him a questioning look before glancing around.  
“I don’t see him,” he said after a moment. “He probably got snapped up already—”  
Griffin kept talking but Jake wasn’t listening. He held himself perfectly still and concentrated on honing his senses, beating back the fury he felt towards himself for letting his instincts grow so dull with disuse. His own pulse beat inside his head as adrenaline threatened to overtake him.  
And what would happen if it did? A small, needling voice inside him spoke then. Would the monster overtake you, or would you remain a feeble, aging human?  
Before he could lose himself to panic, he caught the scent.  
It hovered faintly in the air like stale perfume, rank and unmistakable. Roses in a dumpster, Paul had called it, back when he still spoke to Paul. Jacob felt a tremor building along his spine, but he clenched his fists and it went still so quickly that Jake knew it had been nothing but an instinct that still laced his nerves.  
“I’ll be right back,” he heard himself say to Griffin, not waiting for his response before sidling away into the crowd.  
Pieces of his mind long dormant suddenly vied for position. One part crowed for the fight he was walking towards, already visualizing the crack of pale marble skin. Another part despaired at the crowded room, the impossibility of protecting everyone in it. That part of him longed for the pack that was long gone, and Jake shoved against it viciously.  
The scent led him across the dance floor to the other side of the room, where velvet booths lined the wall, each nook surrounded by thick curtains to absorb sound. Jake gritted his teeth; it was a foolish, dangerous place for anyone to be, with or without monsters like the one he pursued.  
Jake reached the booth where the scent was strongest. He knew that whatever was behind it would have smelled him coming, though there was the possibility they wouldn’t know what the scent signified. The pack wasn’t a secret, but it was the only one of its kind.  
He stood frozen, hands raised to push the curtain back. He pushed each warring part of himself down until only a steely murderous calm remained.  
With one quick tug, he pulled the cloth away.  
The sight before him was so impossible, so beyond the realm of what could be real that for several seconds Jacob just stood staring in horror.  
A blond head turned, glitter-lined eyes flashing in annoyance. They were, Jake thought distantly, a glassy, human blue.  
“Do you mind?” the man said, before catching the full sight of Jacob. His eyes widened slightly. “Or, like, do you want to join?”  
A laugh, low and musical, from the figure laying back against the booth, straddled by the blond man. “I did tell you I was waiting for a friend. And I’m afraid we need to be alone for a bit.”  
The blond man nuzzled into the other figure’s neck, and Jacob bit back a snarl.  
“Come find me after? I think we’re heading to a party on campus in a little while.”  
“I’ll do my best.”  
The blond man extricated himself and slid from the booth, tossing Jacob a flirtatious smirk as he went.  
Jacob barely noticed. He was frozen, his instincts hopelessly tangled with his memories, his thoughts a dull roar of wordless anguish as he stared down at Edward Cullen.  
“Sit, please,” Edward said, all traces of indulgent humor gone from his voice. His face was closed, his expression blank, unreadable. Jake noticed the faint tension in his jaw and realized he was experiencing Jacob’s torrent of feeling. He worked to close off his thoughts the way he’d once learned to do, all those years ago. Edward’s eyes flicked to his.  
He was sitting with an untouched drink in front of him, whiskey in a glass unmarked by fingerprints.  
“I assumed you were dead,” Jacob finally said, still standing. Something flashed in Edward’s eyes, still trained on his own, and Jacob knew what he saw there. Regret.  
But then Edward was smiling, eyebrow cocked.  
“You of all people should know we are not so easily killed. Please, Jacob, sit.”  
Something in his voice, the way it roughened along the edges of his name, finally released Jacob from the spell of his shock. He sat.  
He knew it shouldn’t surprise him, but he still marveled at the way the years hadn’t touched Edward at all. His dark copper hair was the same length, tousled and unkempt in the same frustratingly artful way. His face was perfectly smooth and unlined. He was wearing a black suit, and Jake asked the question before he realized he was speaking.  
“What are you?”  
Edward raised his eyebrow again, and Jacob waved a hand at him. “Your costume.”  
“Ah,” Edward said lightly. “I’m not sure. I think Benjamin—whom you just met—thought I was James Bond. The bartender asked if I was a butler.” He shrugged. “To be honest, I didn’t give much thought to the date. I knew you’d be here, and so I came.”  
Jacob couldn’t gather his thoughts into a coherent second question. They spun off in different directions, peeling apart like fraying threads. How was Edward alive after all these years? How could he possibly be here? The questions raced through him, too quick for speech.  
Edward sat motionless across from him, and Jacob realized with a start that it was because he was listening to Jake’s hurtling thoughts.  
“I can’t tell you anything unless you calm down enough for me to follow,” he said after a moment, the corner of his eye crinkling with mild amusement. Jacob realized he was enjoying watching him flounder in his surprise.  
“What are you doing here?” It was the first question that came fully formed to his lips.  
“As I said, I need to speak with you.”  
Jacob looked around, incredulous. They were closed in by the curtains, blocked from the full view of the bar, but their circumstances seemed no less ridiculous.  
“You had to do this right now?”  
Edward’s mouth turned up at one corner, and Jacob was hit by the memory of his smile, before: it had been crooked, radiant in its loose imperfection.  
Edward’s small smile dropped the instant the image flashed through Jacob’s mind. Jake tried to clamp down his thoughts behind a mental wall once again.  
Edward replied as if he’d had no idea what Jacob had been thinking.  
“I thought you’d like to meet somewhere neutral. And I happened to receive an invitation to this event, and assumed you would have, as well.”  
Benjamin. The blond who had all but licked Edward’s face as Jacob approached. The image launched another barrage of confusion within Jacob, but a realization rose to the surface.  
“You’ve been tracking me. You know where I go.”  
Edward gave him a strange look. “No, not tracking you. I merely asked around.”  
Too late, Jacob realized why Edward was suddenly scrutinizing him.  
“You’ve lost your wolf,” Edward said. It wasn’t a question.  
“I haven’t—”  
“I was wondering why you didn’t come barreling toward me the moment I entered the city, let alone the bar. And you smell different, but I thought maybe…” he trailed off, but his gaze stayed on Jacob’s face, still assessing him. Jacob felt an unwelcome blush crawl over his skin as he was scrutinized.  
“You must be, what, twenty-five now?” Edward asked.  
“Twenty-seven. I was barely younger than—”  
Edward cut him off again. “You have aged, haven’t you? It’s subtle, but I see it now.”  
“I can’t say the same for you.” The words came out tinged with Jacob’s familiar revulsion. He found himself settling back into their old pattern, and the realization was no small relief.  
“No, you can’t.” Edward leaned forward, resting his chin in the palm of his hand. It was an oddly human gesture.  
“So when did you give up, Jacob Black?”  
Jacob felt his lip curling into a snarl, but before he could reply, a hand yanked the curtain back, and Griffin was peering down at him.  
“Jake, what the hell? I’ve been looking everywhere for—”  
As he caught sight of Edward, his eyes widened, mouth forming a little O.  
“Sorry, I, uh, didn’t mean to interrupt.”  
“Not at all,” Edward said genially, as if Jacob hadn’t been seconds away from tearing him apart. “Jacob was just about to go looking for you.”  
Jake rolled his eyes, turning to Griffin. “Give me a second, OK? I’ll meet you at the bar. Just let me finish up here.”  
Griffin’s eyebrows were raised practically to his hairline, but he went, and Jacob breathed a sigh of relief. When he turned back to Edward, the other man was smirking.  
“What?”  
“Your friend is jealous.”  
“Yeah, he clocked you the second you walked in.”  
“I don’t want to keep you from the inquisition he’s planning to launch when you get back to the bar, but I do need to speak with you. It’s…urgent.”  
“Is it about the treaty?”  
“No.”  
“Then it has nothing to do with me.” Jacob put all of his concentration into fortifying his mental defenses, doing his best to keep Edward out of his head. “I lived the last ten years assuming you were dead, and that suited me just fine. I don’t have anything to say to you, and there’s nothing you can say that I’d want to hear.”  
“I might have a lead,” Edward said, voice so quiet Jake almost missed it beneath the music, and would have, if his hearing weren’t just slightly better than any human’s. “On Riley.”  
Jacob felt rocked to his core. He sagged in his seat.  
“Meet me tomorrow. At—well, you know where. I’ll explain everything.”  
Edward’s golden eyes met his own, and though Jacob felt the wave of hatred rolling off his own skin, the vampire didn’t flinch.  
“You’ll be alone?” Jake finally asked.  
“Of course.”  
“Tomorrow. Dusk. You’ll have five minutes to convince me.”  
Jacob didn’t wait for a response. He stood and stalked out of the booth.  
Griffin pounced on him as soon as he returned to the bar.  
“What the fuck was that? Did you just go over there and talk to that guy? What’s his deal? Are you drunk?” His face grew more concerned as he took in Jacob’s stormy expression. “Are you OK? Did he do something shitty? Do I need to kill him?”  
“Can you catch a ride home with someone else? I think I need to go back to my house tonight.”  
“Your house? Jake, it’s like four hours away.”  
“I’m sober, and it’s not even midnight. I’ll text you tomorrow, OK? I promise, everything is fine.”  
Griffin looked like he still wanted to argue, but Jacob pulled him into a quick hug and made his way back out the door.  
Distantly, he felt bad about leaving Griffin at the bar, but there was no way he could stand to stay, not when he didn’t know if Edward would be leaving with Benjamin or staying, not when he didn’t know which option he hated more. His skin was buzzing; he felt like tearing something apart.  
In another time, he would have run home, but he slipped behind the wheel of his old grey truck instead. His days of running were far behind him.


	2. Chapter 2

Jacob had grown out his hair.

Edward hadn’t expected him to look exactly the same as he had a decade earlier; he knew time touched the wolves differently than it did vampires. But he hadn’t expected the man who pulled back the curtain to be so unmistakably human. He still smelled like a dog coming in from the rain, but the scent was muted, mingling with something that was still unmistakably Jacob but somehow less...wild. And there were new lines at his temples that creased each time he’d narrowed his eyes in contempt. Edward had shown up with a part to play, and though he’d played it sufficiently enough to get what he wanted, the eyes--the hair--had been...distracting.

As he watched Jacob stalk back through the bar to his friends, thoughts leaking through every gap in his hopelessly shoddy mental barrier, Edward luxuriated in the effortless, familiar way the words and images in his head floated above the mental noise, angry and insulting as they were. It had been a long time since anyone’s mind had been the least bit interesting to him; walking into the bar, Jacob’s quiet, tired thoughts had been like a lighthouse beacon cutting through the room. 

Now that the curtain to the booth was open, Edward saw his own face in the minds of several nearby patrons, viewing him from all angles, warping his features into their own fictional versions of him even as they looked right at him. In some minds, he looked leering, out of place, perhaps even dangerous. In others, he was lit with the rosy, hazy glow of the viewer’s desire, his lips swollen and pink in a way they never could be. Naturally, Edward vastly preferred the suspicious, unwelcome version of himself.

He felt Benjamin approach once more, his mind a nauseating swirl of alcohol and nervousness and a bold desire that came from a confidence that he already had what he wanted.   
“Ready to go to the party?” he asked, sliding a too-hot hand over Edward’s shoulder to the back of his neck. Edward slipped from his grip and stood in one graceful, fluid movement, too quickly for Benjamin’s eyes to track.  
“I’m afraid I won’t be joining you this evening,” Edward said. “Do call me the next time you have an event, though. I’d like to see you again.”

The lie was nothing to him, just another small sin in a sea of worse crimes. Benjamin bit his lip in disappointment, but nodded. Edward watched to ensure he made it safely back to his friends before heading toward the exit. He was nearly through the curtain that led outside when he felt the twinge of panic, ringing like a bell in the middle of the crowd. He let it rise above the rest of the mental noise from the bar, and it took shape and sharpened in his mind.  
A man, so drunk he couldn’t stand. His friend, smaller, without the strength to carry him. Edward was about to leave them to it, satisfied that no one was in real danger, when he saw something in the drunk man’s mind that made him stop short: it was Jacob, pressed so close he could feel his breath through the memory. This was…a friend of Jacob’s, then. The one he’d been dancing with earlier, when Edward walked in. Through the man’s eyes, Edward recognized the swimming face of the man holding him up—Griffin, who had interrupted his conversation with Jacob. Edward felt Griffin’s worry and frustration as the drunk man slid halfway to the ground again.  
Edward let their minds lead him to the dark corner of the dance floor, where the other patrons, lost to their revel, seemed ignorant to Griffin’s struggle.  
“Can I help?” he asked as he slid beside them, leaning against the wall as if he’d always been there. Griffin looked up at him in surprise; Edward felt his uncertainty, mingled with that instinctual nervousness some humans took on when he got too close. “Yeah, thanks,” Griffin said, breathing a little heavily from the exertion. Edward was careful to take his time pulling the man from the floor—Stephen was his name, Edward learned in Griffin’s mind—and leaned a little bit to take his weight, though he barely felt it.  
“Where to?”  
Griffin led them to a booth, apologetically asking Edward to sit with Stephen while he went to gather their things. Once they were alone, Stephen eyed him blearily, his head rolling a bit on his neck.  
His mind was swimming from the alcohol, but Edward could still follow the train of his thoughts. He saw the bar, earlier, shots lined up along the dark wood, glowing neon in the lights. Then he saw Jacob, leaning against the wall, face inscrutable. Then Griffin was tugging him over, and his palms were sweaty, but Jacob had agreed to dance with him. And then—  
Edward felt the phantom bite of tile against bare knees, saw Jacob standing above him, and backed out of the sudden memory as quickly as he could, tuning into the river of inanities flowing through the minds around them.  
Stephen squinted at him. “Who are you?”  
For an instant, Edward read his expression as knowing, like he’d somehow felt Edward rifling through his head. But then he laid his cheek on his arms and closed his eyes, and Edward realized he’d simply forgotten having been lifted from the floor.  
Griffin came back then, and Edward took his leave, feeling unsettled. Though he tried to think of other things as he left the bar, his mind inevitably turned back to Stephen’s memory. He realized now that it had to have been from earlier in the past than that night—the bathroom looked like it was in a house, and Jacob’s hair had been damp and pulled back, rather than loose around his shoulders.  
That hair. Edward shook his head as he headed out into the cold, as if to clear out the memory of it. Edward supposed Jacob had always been planning to grow it out, had missed it when he’d cut it to fit in with the other wolves. But Edward wouldn’t have predicted the effect--it made him look powerful, whole. 

\---

Jacob drove the hours back to La Push in silence, his thoughts mingling with the roar of the truck into his own private cacophony. He kept seeing Edward laying back in that booth, the skin of his neck glistening with the shimmering makeup that had rubbed off of Benjamin’s skin. Try as he might, he couldn’t reconcile the image with the stoic, reserved man Jacob had known. And he certainly looked nothing like the wild animal Edward had been when—well, after. When the mask fell off.   
Now, it seemed like Edward was wearing a different mask entirely. But what could his angle possibly be? How could he let that human so close? And why would he pretend to want him, whoever he was? No matter how he assembled and reassembled the details of the night, it didn’t make sense. Especially when Edward mentioned the lead on Riley.

Even thinking the name sent a miserable, defeated shudder through him. How could Edward know anything about Riley, ten years after the trail went cold? And why would he waste his time coming to tell Jacob about it? He could have just taken care of it himself, with his family. If he was feeling really generous, he could’ve sent a note along whenever he remembered Jacob existed. It’s what Jacob himself would have done. One sign of Riley’s whereabouts and he would have been ended.  
But Jacob wouldn’t have been able do it alone, he realized--not anymore. Edward had seen right to the truth of it almost immediately, and the crush of humiliation at the memory of his appraising, disappointed expression was a physical sensation. Jacob’s grip was hard on the steering wheel.

When did you give up, Jacob Black?

Fuck that. Jacob had done what the others had always wanted to do, something that took Sam four years to accomplish. Jacob had done it in one. When the threat of the vampires lifted, he’d taken his life back. He’d moved on. He didn’t need the judgement of some specter from his past, a ghost who looked at him like he knew him. 

He was so consumed with his thoughts that he was surprised when his headlights washed over his own driveway, the dirt paths leading to the door and the barn worn with tire tracks, the red siding as faded and peeling as ever. Jacob parked his truck close to the barn, but headed up to the house. He could see the faint blue glow of the television through the back windows.  
Here, close to the ocean, the air was warmer and wetter than it had felt in the city, but Jacob still checked to make sure the windows in the living room and kitchen were closed and latched. The damp hurt Billy’s joints these days, and their heating bill was high enough as it was.  
Jacob poked his head into Billy’s room. He saw the gently rising shape of his father, wheelchair parked beside the bed. In the dim light of pre-dawn, Jake could just barely make out the rhythm of his breathing. Back in the main room of the house, Jacob made sure the kitchen was clean and everything was turned off before heading out to the barn.

In the decade since he’d last seen Edward, Jacob—with the help of the pack—had torn down the garage that used to be behind his house, emptying it of tools and half-finished projects and disassembling it piece by piece. Then he’d put up a new structure in its place, something similar in size, but with a lofted space for sleeping and some salvaged insulation for the colder months. It didn’t have power or water, but he didn’t mind going into the house for most things. What he’d really needed was a place to spend his nights, where his naked misery wouldn’t be on full display to Billy.  
And it had become convenient, too, when he and Leah had started sleeping together--and later, when he’d started seeing men. Jacob knew Billy saw the boys skulking back to their cars in the grey light of dawn, but he never said anything, so neither had Jake. Nowadays, the barn was mostly a garage once again, where Jacob made extra money fixing old cars and lawn mowers for folks around the reservation. Now that he was working as a real mechanic full time, he didn’t get to do it as much as he used to, but it still felt good to help out when he could. He picked his way through the dim shapes of the machines and pulled himself up into the loft with the ease of practice.  
Up here, Jacob switched on his battery-powered lantern on the crate he used as a bedside table so he could see what he was doing as he shrugged out of his clothes and slipped into his bed, which wasn’t more than a mattress on top of some stacked pallets. The lantern had been a gift from Sam a few months after he realized that Jacob was serious about not phasing again. Jacob had scoffed at it, but Sam just shook his head.  
“I know you can still see in the dark now,” he’d said. “But that won’t be true forever.”  
Jacob hadn’t minded when Sam had eventually been right--like his sense of smell, he could still see better than any human, enough to get by in most situations. But as he settled into bed and turned off the lamp, he stared into the murky, hidden corners of the barn and wished for the first time that he could see into the shadows as he’d used to.


	3. Chapter 3

The next day dawned cold and gray, the clouds an even cast across the sky. Jacob was up early, despite going to bed near dawn. He felt full of nervous energy, the day laid before him like an interminable chore.  
Billy was already in the living room when Jake finally wandered in to find something to eat.  
“You should really let me help you into your chair, Dad,” he admonished without any real energy.  
“I’m perfectly fine,” Billy waved him off. The sound of the TV eventually lured Jacob into the living room, microwaved burrito already halfway in his mouth. On screen, a reporter was on the University of Washington campus, a few blocks from where Griffin lived.  
“Crazy story this morning,” Billy filled him in. “A girl missing from one of the city colleges last week, now a guy your age from U Dub. Grad student.”  
“I can ask Seth what he thinks of it,” Jacob replied, “Though it’s pretty far outside of his usual area.”  
“I don’t think it’s anything those four need to worry about.”  
Seth, Quil, Colin, and Brady; those were the wolves who were left. Sam, Jared, and Paul had all gotten married and left the pack. Embry was at school in San Francisco. Leah had simply stopped phasing the second she developed enough control to give it up. Ten wolves, down to four. Even that was four more than the reservation needed, now that the Cullens were gone.  
Eyes still on the TV, Jacob got on the phone.  
“What’s up, Jake?” Seth answered on the second ring.  
“Hey, Seth. I might have to work late tonight. Can you keep an eye on things for me?”  
Billy grunted from the other room. He knew as well as Seth did that “keep an eye on things” meant “babysit Billy.”  
“Sure thing,” Seth answered readily. “The garage is keeping you late on a Sunday?”  
“It’s a special project. VIP client. I want to finish it up.”  
“OK, no problem. Hey, want to come by tomorrow after work? I think Sam and Em are going to swing by with Aya and—”  
“I can’t,” Jacob cut him off.  
“Alright,” Seth answered without surprise. “Next time, then. Bye, Jake.”  
Jacob was amazed he ever got invited anywhere anymore—he couldn’t remember the last time he accepted an invitation from anyone in the pack besides Leah, and he didn’t even see much of her anymore. He knew his old friends were confused and hurt by how much time he spent with his friends in the city, but how could he explain to them that it was simply less complicated to be with people who hadn’t known him his whole life? People who hadn’t known him before?  
“I’m heading out,” Jacob said. “Call the Clearwaters if you need anything.”  
“You aren’t going to warm my bottle for me before you leave?” Billy called after him as he let the screen door swing shut behind him.  
On the rare Sundays when he wasn’t sleeping off a long night at Griffin’s, Jacob liked to get ahead of the week by picking up Billy’s prescriptions and doing some grocery shopping in Forks to get the things he couldn’t find at the general store on the reservation. It was hard for Billy to run errands without help, especially ones that required going into town. So Jacob headed into the Thriftway with the usual Sunday crowd of tired-looking parents and tried to forget that he’d be face to face with Edward Cullen in a matter of hours.  
Of course, the universe had other plans.  
“I swear Lou, the lights were on. I could see it through the trees.”  
The words--spoken by one middle-aged grocery shelver to another--weren’t remarkable on their own, but something in her voice made Jacob still, hand hovering over a six-pack of applesauce. The shelvers were a half-length down the aisle from him, ripping into boxes of shelf-stable fruit cups and heedless of his presence.  
“No one said anything about that house selling. We all heard how fancy it is. It’d be in the paper.”  
“Maybe. Maybe not. Who knows how expensive places like that get bought and sold. I don’t think they just list them in the classifieds like your ranch, Jen.”  
“Tom at the paper would’ve caught wind. He’s been so curious about what’s gonna happen to that place. He’d know if the doctor listed it.”  
The doctor. Jacob realized his fingers were still poised over the containers of applesauce and let his arm drop. They were talking about the Cullen place. Of course they were.  
“Well, maybe they’re finally going to sell it. Or, hey, move back in.”  
“Their kids have got to be long grown by now. Why not just get a little condo someplace more lively?”  
The shelvers moved on to bickering about beach towns and condo prices, and Jacob walked stiffly to the next aisle, barely looking at the shelves as he filled his basket and made his way through the checkout.   
Edward had promised he was alone—but did he mean entirely, or just for their meeting? Were the Cullens back? Though the treaty was all but dissolved by the time the Cullens left Washington, Jacob didn’t want to disturb the fragile peace that had emerged in the wake of their leaving. He thought of Aya and Brynn, six and four, Sam and Emily’s kids. He thought of Jared and Kim, the baby they were expecting in March. Embry’s PhD program in California, the boy with blue eyes he’d called to tell Jacob about, the way his mother still cried with pride every time she talked about him.  
How much would be different, if the Cullens hadn’t left? Would they ever have felt safe enough to truly live their lives?  
He wouldn’t let it happen, Jacob decided as he drove towards the trailhead, speeding along the foggy road back to his house. He didn’t care what he had to do to drive them away. The Cullens were not staying in Forks.

\---

Jacob was pacing like a caged animal by mid-afternoon, so he left early and took his time hiking to the clearing, though he knew the way through the trees as well as anyone. The grey light filtered thinly through the last of the autumn leaves. He’d left his jacket in the car; though he felt the cold a bit more these days, a coat was still mostly for show.  
The sun was just barely dipping towards the horizon when Jacob arrived, so he waited. Being in the woods centered him, even still, but it didn’t bring him any joy to be back in this spot, the place where they’d trained to fight the newborns, where Edward’s unnerving, blond brother had taught them all how to rip even the strongest vampires to shreds.  
Jacob figured Edward could use the reminder.  
The sun sank lower as Jacob stood there, silently stewing. But it was a shorter wait than he'd expected, and he was glad he'd arrived early as Edward appeared in the clearing.  
He was wearing a white collared shirt and black jeans tucked into pristine-looking boots, his sleeves rolled up to reveal the smooth, perfect planes of his forearms. Jacob crossed his own arms over his chest. In the dimming grey light, Edward’s skin looked pearlescent. Jacob wondered if the rest of them were lurking in the shadows downwind, just waiting for a moment to reveal themselves. He stared hard into the shadowed trees, cursing his dulled senses.  
“Thank you for coming,” Edward said as he approached, keeping several feet back from where Jacob stood. His voice carried easily across the space. “I wasn’t sure if you would.”  
“You can read my mind. You know I meant what I said.”  
“You’ve gotten rather good at keeping me out of your head. I think only Rosalie is better at it than you are, and she usually leaves her defenses down simply to irritate me. Speaking of which, you can stop glaring into the forest. I’m alone.”  
Jacob just turned his stony stare towards Edward instead.  
“I told you five minutes, leech. Is this how you want to spend them? Making small talk?”  
“You’re right. I’m sorry.”  
Edward shifted towards him, as if he were going to close the gap between them, and Jacob had to fight the urge to rear back. But Edward only leaned in, looking him over. Evaluating. Jacob gritted his teeth.  
“I have to admit, when I came to you, I didn’t realize you were no longer shifting. I wouldn’t have sought you out, had I known. But maybe it won’t be an issue anyway.”  
Jacob made a show of looking at the sky, boredly assessing the time, though clouds obscured the setting sun. Edward sighed.  
“Look, I lied. I’m sorry. There’s no news of Riley. Nothing concrete, anyway.”  
“What the hell, Cullen?” Jacob growled, already stalking across the clearing back to the trail. But then Edward was beside him, grabbing his arm, and Jacob surprised himself with the animal ferocity that ripped out of him at the contact. Edward’s hand felt searingly cold on his bare skin.   
Edward released him immediately, unruffled.  
“Regardless, I do need your help.”  
“Why would I ever help you?”   
“Because if you don’t, people are going to die.”  
Unbidden, a memory from ten years ago rose to the forefront of Jacob’s mind like a keening scream. He knew Edward heard the echo of his thoughts. The vampire’s face appeared to collapse, his carefully schooled nonchalance melting entirely away.  
Finally, Jacob saw what he’d wanted to see all along: a monster, half feral, undeniably suffering. He felt something like satisfaction at the sight.  
“Well, people do seem to die around you, don’t they?”  
Edward looked into his eyes then, and Jacob fought to maintain his gaze, though he wanted to flinch away from the pain there.  
“I won’t let it happen. Not again.”  
Jacob stared at him. Edward made a disgusted sound.  
“You think I—Jacob, no. Never. Never again. It’s not...someone I know personally.”  
“Then why is it so important that you be the one to come to the rescue? And why do you need me? Can’t your sister see everything that’s going to happen anyway?”  
“Alice is…inaccessible to me. And the skills I need are more, ah, physical in nature. No, Jacob, I need you.”  
“I’m only going to ask this one more time: why me?”  
“Because I think the missing students in Seattle have been taken by a vampire. Maybe not Riley, but someone like him. Someone like Victoria. And because it’s the right thing to do, Jacob. To use our peculiar gifts to protect the innocent. To prevent needless death. To keep the humans safe from...things like us. Like me.”  
It was Jacob’s turn to scoff in disgust. He met Edward eye, unwavering.  
“Bella is dead, Edward. You killed her, and nothing you can do will ever bring her back.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I skipped a week--turns out buying a house is time-consuming. Updates may be a little spotty for a bit.

After their battle with the newborns, Jacob didn’t wake up for two days.   
When he finally surfaced through the haze of drug-induced numbness, his first conscious thought was that Bella was sitting vigil by his bedside. But as he tried to move, she leaned forward to restrain him, strong hands unyielding on his uninjured shoulder, and he realized he was wrong.  
“Stop moving, or you’ll just hurt yourself more,” Leah muttered, pressing him back to the bed. “You may not be able to feel it right now, but you got royally fucked up.”  
Jacob worked his dry tongue, trying to form words. When Leah was satisfied he wasn’t going to try to sit up again, she leaned back in her chair, clearly dragged in from the kitchen.  
“I’m going to get the doctor in a minute,” she said. “You’re in no shape for this right now. But you should know we won. The vampires are dead.”  
Jacob must have fallen asleep after that, because his next memory was of hissing voices in the hall outside the door, so low he had to focus to catch the words despite his heightened hearing.  
“--shouldn’t have told him that,” Seth was saying. “It wasn’t fair.”  
“He’s never going to heal if he shifts,” Leah replied. “He’d probably kill himself. What’s the point? He’ll find out soon enough.”  
The door cracked open. Seth peeked his head in.  
“Hi,” Jacob croaked, and they both winced at the sound of his voice.  
“Carlisle’s on his way with more medicine, Jake,” Seth said. “Just go back to sleep, OK?”  
It was another day of that before Jacob could sit up for more than two seconds without Leah forcing him back down. Braces encircled his torso and wrapped around his right shoulder, restricting his movement. Jacob tried once to lift his arm and promptly passed out. When he came to, Carlisle was peering over him, concern animating his otherwise serene face.  
“You’re obviously doing better than a human would be doing in similar circumstances, but I am concerned that your rapid healing won’t allow your injuries to set properly.” He said quietly, peering at the liquid inside the IV bag hanging beside Jacob’s bed. He hadn’t even noticed it was there, that there was a needle in his left forearm.  
“What—” Jacob croaked. Carlisle reached over to his desk and brought over a cup of water, lifting the straw to Jacob’s lips and waiting as he laboriously took a sip. Through his haze, Jacob wondered at the strange, steady compassion of Carlisle Cullen.  
“It’s pain medication. I’ve been weaning you off of the sedative, so you should feel more awake soon. It’s very important that you don’t move. I have someone with you most hours of the day, so you shouldn’t need anything until I come back in the morning.”  
“Please,” Jacob said, his voice less of a rasp but still sounding painful. “Let her visit me.”  
In his drug-addled mind, this made perfect sense. In the two—three?—days he’d been here, Bella hadn’t come to see him once. The only reasonable explanation was that the Cullens were preventing it. He wasn’t so deranged by pain or medication that he thought she would choose him forever, but it wasn’t like her to stay away, even when he begged her to do so.  
“Just rest for now, Jacob,” Carlisle said, injecting something into his IV line. “I’m giving you the last of the sedative. Tomorrow, you should be out of the woods.”  
Jacob didn’t want to sleep. He wanted to talk to Bella. But as he fell inevitably into unconsciousness, he swore he felt her cool hand on his brow.

“Jake, wake up.”  
“Bella?” he asked, fighting his way to wakefulness. But it was Leah again. The light that filtered through his window was thin, red-tinged. He’d slept away another day.  
“Jake, how are you feeling?”  
Jacob cautiously raised himself up, and felt nothing but a tightness on his right side. He slowly raised his arm and winced. It felt like his right side was one enormous bruise, and his limbs felt stiff and weak with disuse.  
“Sore as all hell,” he told Leah, “but I think I’ve healed up OK.”  
He noticed the door was open behind Leah, and he angled his head to peer into the hallway, but Leah kicked the door closed with her heel.  
“Where is everyone else?” Jacob asked, hoping he sounded nonchalant. In truth, he was hurt by the fact that no one but the Clearwaters had come to see him. “No one—I mean, everyone is OK, right?”  
“The pack is fine. They’re just…tying up loose ends. Making sure the bodies are taken care of and the woods are clean.” She smiled then, but it didn’t reach her eyes. “Not all of us can just nap for a week.”  
“Well, I think I’m ready to be a little bit more useful now.” Jacob slowly lifted himself up on one elbow, then swung his feet to the floor, grunting from the effort. He was belatedly glad that someone had put sweatpants on him at some point during his convalescence.  
“Don’t you dare fall over,” Leah warned him, leaning as far out of his way as she could in the tiny room. “I’ll undo all that healing you’ve done in five seconds.” But despite her threats, Leah held out her hands in case he needed to steady himself. Jacob was able to stand with no help, though he staggered like an old man.  
“So what’d I miss, besides all the corpse-burning fun?”  
He wasn’t prepared for how Leah’s face fell, how she had to take a long, shaky breath to steady herself.  
“Listen, I have to get this out,” she said, none of her usual brusqueness present in her voice or face. “Even though I totally had it, and would have been fine, I know you were trying to be helpful, even if it got you crushed into a meat sack full of bone dust. So thank you, OK? Thank you.”  
“You’re…welcome?” Despite everything that had happened in the last few months, Jacob really didn’t know Leah all that well. She kept herself closed off from the pack as much as she possibly could, and made her disdain for their lifestyle apparent as often as she could. He’d never heard her apologize before, let alone in so many words. But back in the clearing, when he saw that newborn lunge for her--he hadn’t even had to think about it. He just moved.  
“Well, I’d say you’d do the same for me, but you probably wouldn’t,” he continued as she just looked at him. “But you’re welcome, Leah. Really.”  
Jacob felt himself hitting the threshold of his stamina, and he sat down on the edge of the bed in a heavy, graceless motion. Here, his knees practically brushed hers, but she didn’t move away. Jacob felt a trickle of dread roll down his spine.  
“Leah, what is it?”  
“Seth,” Leah called over her shoulder, as if he hadn’t spoken. “Can you help me?”  
Together, the three of them managed to get Jacob out in the yard, where he sat heavily in one of the grimy plastic chairs that had been out there practically as long as he’d been alive. He felt the dirty water from the last rain soak coldly into the thin fabric of his sweatpants, and the plastic creaked forbiddingly beneath his weight.  
“You look good, Jake.”  
Suddenly, Seth and Leah were gone, and Billy was rolling around the side of the house. Jacob had the sense that he was losing time. Where had the others gone? How did Billy get out of the house and down the ramp so quickly? But here he was, and Jacob was happy to see him, though he felt exhausted from the walk outside.  
“Hey, old man,” he said, reaching a hand out to touch Billy’s shoulder as he drew near. Jacob noticed that it looked like Billy hadn’t been sleeping. His face was drawn, eyes bloodshot and squinting in the sunset.  
“Haven’t been worrying about me too much, have you?” Jake asked, trying to keep his voice light. “No need, see? I’m fine.”  
“Son,” Billy said, and it was all Jake needed to know something was seriously wrong. He looked into Billy’s face and saw the grief there.  
“Who?” he managed.  
“They did everything they could. Seth, Sam, that doctor. But they got Bella, Jake. She’s gone.”  
“No,” he said immediately. “That’s not true. She was away from the action. They were all with us, the leeches. Leah said—”  
“It was a trap,” Billy continued quietly. “Sam can tell you the specifics, when you’re ready to hear them, but I wanted you to get the news from me. We wanted to wait until you were well enough—”  
“So she’s a vampire,” Jacob breathed, revulsion rolling over him. He’d always known it was a possibility, even a likelihood, but he could accept now that he’d love her, even if she was one of them, even if—  
“Jake, no,” Billy said, and his voice broke, and then Jacob realized he was crying, too. “She’s dead. They couldn’t save her.”  
The truth hit him like a sick wave, and Jacob doubled over, the chair cracking underneath him as he fell to his knees in the dirt, the pain of the impact barely registering.  
Bella was dead. She’d been dead for days while he lay in bed, ignorant. The universe was moving along with no center, no meaning. And Jacob hadn’t known.  
“What did they do to her?” he growled from the ground, his body already vibrating, the wolf thrashing for release beneath his skin. But he fought it for just a minute more, waiting to hear Billy’s response.  
“The Cullens...cleaned her up, brought her body into town. For Charlie. The funeral is tomorrow. I thought you should know.”  
The Cullens.   
With that final thought, the image of Edward’s hardened, lifeless face flashing across his mind, he was phasing, leaping forward at the last instant to avoid hurting Billy. The transformation ripped through him, reforming his newly knit bones, and he howled in pain as he changed. But then it was over, and he was strong, the physical pain nothing compared to the knawing emptiness in his chest.  
Sam was phased, and Jacob felt his soothing thoughts as he sent them Jacob’s way, and he felt Quil’s _oh shit, he knows,_ before both wolves abruptly dropped from his mind. Jacob ran through the woods, unsure of where he was going until he was suddenly there.  
The Cullens’ house.  
The windows were dark, but Jacob was too far gone to stop, and he barrelled through the plate glass without a moment of hesitation, shattering the largest front window with a dimly satisfying crash. He shook the glass from his fur, unharmed. The smell assaulted him as he stalked through the room: it reeked of vampire, the rotting, floral stench sending a tremor of hate through Jacob’s body. But he smelled her, too—stale, but it was there, mixing grotesquely with the stench of the leeches. Jacob moaned, a low, unnatural sound in his wolf throat.  
If he hadn’t been half mad with grief, he would have noticed then the Cullens had moved on. The furniture remained, as did most of their personal effects, but the important things were gone: the ancient cross was missing from the wall, the paint faintly different where it had hung. The piano was covered, the shades drawn. The house had been closed up.  
But Jacob barely registered the absence of the vampires. He followed the smell of Bella upstairs and into a room at the end of the hall. There, he saw a bed, the sheets still rumpled from where it had been hastily made by someone who wasn’t known for their fastidious neatness.  
Jacob found himself burying his face in the duvet, breathing in the smell of her skin, her hair—hers, and Edward’s too. The smell was like rosewater and mint, burning and floral. And there were traces that weren’t just vampire, but Edward specifically, a smell he’d learned to recognize despite himself: subtle smokiness, pinewood and amber. Jacob’s head swam with grief.  
Sam appeared in his mind then, apologetic but firm.  
“Jacob, you’re in violation of the treaty. We can’t help you there. Come home.”  
 _Fuck off,_ Jacob replied, shrugging off Sam’s order. It had gotten easier and easier to do that, especially now, when his mind was barely his own, barely more than animal.  
Leah appeared in his mind then, and Embry, and before he knew it Jake’s head was a cacophony of pity and love and he couldn’t stand it, didn’t want any of it. And so he phased, and found himself kneeling naked by Edward Cullen’s bed, weeping into his blankets.


End file.
